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The Rumford Fair Housing Act was passed in 1963 by the California Legislature to help end racial discrimination by property owners and landlords who refused to rent or sell their property to "colored" people.[4] It was drafted by William Byron Rumford, the first African American from Northern California to serve in the legislature. The Act provided that landlords could not deny people housing because of ethnicity, religion, sex, marital status, physical handicap, or familial status.[5]

In 1964, the California Real Estate Association sponsored an initiative to counteract the effects of the Act.[6]

The initiative, numbered Proposition 14 when it was certified for the ballot, was to add an amendment (Cal. Const. art. I, § 26) to the constitution of California. This amendment would provide, in part, as follows:

Neither the State nor any subdivision or agency thereof shall deny, limit or abridge, directly or indirectly, the right of any person, who is willing or desires to sell, lease or rent any part or all of his real property, to decline to sell, lease or rent such property to such person or persons as he, in his absolute discretion, chooses.[7]

The amendment attempted to re-legalize discrimination by landlords and property owners.

Following much publicity the proposition gained the endorsement of many large conservative political groups, including the John Birch Society and the California Republican Assembly. As these and other groups endorsed the proposal it became increasingly more popular and the petition to have the proposition added to the ballot garnered over one million signatures. This was more than twice the 480,000 signatures that were required.[8]

In endorsing Proposition 14, the Los Angeles Times stated: “One of man’s most ancient rights in a free society is the privilege of using and disposing of his private property in whatever manner he deems appropriate.” The editorial further stated: “But we do feel, and strongly, that housing equality cannot safely be achieved at the expense of still another basic right.”[9][10][11]

In a letter to the editor response to the Los Angeles Times endorsing the Proposition 14 constitutional amendment, then California Attorney GeneralStanley Mosk stated: “I oppose the segregation initiative. I oppose it because it sugar-coats bigotry with an appeal to generalities we can accept, while ignoring the specific problem that confronts us.”[12]

The Proposition 14 campaign was heated and included several controversial comments from Edmund Brown who was the Governor of California at the time. Governor Brown stated that passage of Proposition 14 would put into California’s Constitution “a provision for discrimination of which not even Mississippi or Alabama can boast.”[13] Previously, Governor Brown had likened the campaign for Proposition 14 to “another hate binge which began more than 30 years ago in a Munich beer hall.”[14] In a letter to the editor response to several items published in the Los Angeles Times relating to Proposition 14, Governor Brown wrote: “I submit that it is not the Governor who is inflammatory. It is Proposition 14. And I submit that it is not the opponents of Proposition 14 who encourage the racists and bigots in this state, but those who support Proposition 14.”[15]

Proposition 14 appeared on the November 3, 1964 General Election ballot in California. The ballot proposition easily passed with 65.39% support, receiving 4,526,460 votes in support and 2,395,747 votes against.[16]

Soon after it was passed, the federal government cut off all housing funds to California. Many also cited the proposition as one of the causes of the Watts Riots of 1965.[19]

With the federal housing funds cut off and with the support of Governor Pat Brown, the constitutionality of the measure was challenged soon afterward. In 1966, the California Supreme Court did not consider whether Proposition 14 was unconstitutional because it violated the equal protection and due process provisions of the California Constitution; instead, it held that Proposition 14 violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution.[20] Gov. Brown's stance proved controversial; later in 1966, he was defeated in his bid for re-election by Ronald Reagan. However, Reagan opposed both Proposition 14 and the Rumford Act, and stated that Proposition 14 was “not a wise measure.”[21] Reagan labeled the Rumford Act as an attempt "to give one segment of our population a right at the expense of the basic rights of all our citizens."[22]

However, the case continued. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the California Supreme Court's decision in Reitman v. Mulkey (1967), holding that Proposition 14 was invalid because it violated the equal protection clause. The proposition was repealed by Proposition 7 in the November, 1974 election.[23]

Reitman established a significant precedent because it held that state assistance or encouragement of private discrimination violated the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment.